Has reading a book ever changed your life?

"Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance", I read it in college and promptly dropped out and wanted to buy a motorcycle and drive around the country. That didn't work out the way I planned it but I was glad I left school at that moment in my life. It helped me realize I had a whole lot to learn about the world and not all of that learning could happen in academia. Great question!

Fight Club changed my life because I realized there are more important things in life than saving up for a dream retirement or whatever, but that it is also important to respect such goals. In other words, coming to grips with your life sometimes requires an inner catharsis in which you accept that you have deeply ambivalent thoughts.

Lies my Teacher Told Me was also a great book I read in my sociology of education class. It revealed parts of history that aren't usually mentioned in the average american high school history class.

The adventures of Tom Sawyer. This was the first time I ever crawled inside a book and lived it rather than just reading it. Several honorary mentions include, The Hobbit, The Hitchikers Guide to The Galaxy, Hanta Yo, and National Geographic. This last one was important as it coincided with the onset of puberty.

Do you mean the way Dorian Gray was effected by some unknown volume? I wish that I could be open enough for a book to touch me that deeply. Not yet though. I have had books have a great affect on me for a while.

Fahrenheit 451 stopped me up for a while. Got me thinking about how much I am crontributing to the degeneration of literature and if my own books are literary enough. Am I committing an injustice if I contribute only escapist fiction? Stopped my pen for a while.

Another one was The Innocent Traveller by Ethel Wilson. It allowed me to break free from a necessesity for greatness and acheivment that my mother bore into me and see the beautiful and necessary aspects of lives that are lived to the fullest and promptly forgotten.

Aristotle's Rhetoric is the most empowering and humanistic work of all time, and it's so logical and simple despite it's brutal complexity.

And, believe it or not, Anna Karenina too. In particular, the part near the end when Levin and Kitty go visit Nikolai on his death bed. I have sort of a "hospital phobia" and dread them, they are so awful. That scene, through Kitty's actions and Levin's sort of nurturing-ineptitude, was eye opening in its beauty and simplicity (on the part of Kitty), and I've carried it with me ever since. I hope I can call it up if the need ever arises.

I'm tempted to add The true Story of the Bilderberg Group by Daniel Estulin.If everything in the book is true, and I have no reason to believe it isn't, then everything I learned about the history of the world, especially the western world, in the last 60 - 70 years or so, perhaps longer, is lies.We, as the common people, have been lied to time and time again by our leaders who have had an ulterior motive we were not permitted to know of, nor discuss.Yes that is life-changing. Perhaps even WWII was contrived to benefit some rich conglomerate somewhere. Everything else was.

Reading the book "Under a War-Torn Sky" by L.M. Elliot changed my life. This exciting historical fiction about World War II aided my decision to join the military. After reading the whirl-wind journey of a young pilot named Henry who crashes in foreign land and is the only one to survive, I got to thinking about my former conviction at the age of eleven when terrorist attacked my country on 9/11.

When I read about the amazing feats Henry accomplished, I was convinced that I wanted to help people in that way and that I needed to defend my country and other who cannot defend themselves by putting on a uniform and marching in the ranks of the U.S. Army.

This book is well-written and awe inspiring. Anyone with an interest in WWII or historical fiction should check it out!

I have read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance twice over the past 15 years and have just started a third reading. It takes me on an internal journey and each time I read it, I emerge somewhat more aware than when I began.

In high school, I was taking psych and socialogy, I really wanted to be a child psychologist, my teacher gave me a book on split personalities and Sybil, I read them and cried most of the way through, I decided that I wasn't ment for that job.

The Book of Mormon should be added to that list but most people really don't want to start a Christians or Religious vs atheist argument about their holy writ or be pitted against each other on this topic.

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"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go." - Dr...